Bob,  Are these Russian queens ones that have been mated or artificially
inseminated to Russian drones?

These 100 queens are not instrumentally inseminated *BUT* they are open
mated to Russian drones. This is the first year I have been able to get pure
stock for production queens and only one breeder would assure me that their
queens would be almost 100% open mated to Russian drones.

 I have never bought queens from the Russian breeder before but Glenn
Apiaries recommended the breeder to me. Glenn Apiaries has sold the breeder
many II Russian queens.

I am sure many of the open bred with a excellent line would be OK but I need
as close to pure stock as possible as I will be selecting several breeder
queens from the 100.

This time of year we buy queens from about any breeder which has extras. We
are making nucs every day now. We start calling the breeder from which we
have had the best queens and then start down the list until we get queens.
The process will work with production queens but Russian & SMR queens have
got long waiting lists.

If you should need queens and were told last fall that the dates you wanted
were booked full call again as the breeder *might* be overstocked with
queens and will ship right away. I am very serious as we always find queens
this time of year before we get to the bottom of the queen breeder list.

Steve said:
  Around here (Puget Sound area of Washington)
Russian queens are available but their offspring will be hybrid which, as
you know, reduces their value in terms of resistance quite a bit compared to
he purely bred queens.

Some of these hybrids are excellent bees but as you point out it is hard to
judge their resistance. We had the same problem with the Buckfast bee. We
found a big difference in the bee from hive to hive. After several years of
Buckfast use I decided  to deal with the tracheal mites and run Italians
which despite their drawbacks always seem to outproduce the other lines in
honey production.

 Steve said:
 Still these queens we can get are more expensive than Italian queens.

The Russian breeder stock is not cheap at $500 U.S. a breeder queen and
Russian queens are hard to introduce. Two reasons given to me for high cost.
I expect the price of a Russian queen in the future to be the same as other
lines.

Steve said:
  Do you or anyone else think it is worth spending a few extra pesos to get
the openly bred Russian queens?

It is my *opinion* that the Russian queen has a different level of pheromone
which makes introduction harder. Many beekeepers report introduction
problems. Introduction loss could make the Russian choice very expensive as
the only guarentee provided by the queen breeder is live delivery. I believe
the difference between another line and the Russian is worth the money to
try the Russian bee for yourself but you might wish you would have stuck
with your tried and true line if your new Russian queen is superceded by the
hive and the hive is left queenless. Several of our Midwestern Beekeepers
have had around three Russian queens superceded before they got a Russian
queen installed. I do not expect high introduction loses but will be honest
if asked by the list.

Without a doubt the Russian queen must be introduced carefully.

 Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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